Page 26 of Method of Revenge
Leo closed and locked the door again, but before she could make a reply, she felt a tug on one of her curling wrappers. She slapped Jasper’s hand away and was startled when he cracked a rare, playful grin.
“Don’t tease me,” she said. “And don’t wake Flora. She’s had a difficult day.”
It seemed all her days were difficult as of late. She’d called Mrs. Boardman, her new nurse, by Leo’s mother’s name, Andromeda, for most of the day and raged incoherently as if in a one-sided argument.
She placed the kettle on the hob. “I suppose you’re here to chastise me.”
Jasper set his hat on the small wooden table, which she and Claude used for preparing meals and most nights, to sit around while eating. They rarely used the small dining room at the front of the house, preferring instead the simplicity of the kitchen.
Jasper kept his coat on and lowered himself into a chair, stretching his back into an arch as he sat. “I didn’t like finding you in my office with Andrew Carter.”
His voice was unexpectedly docile. Leo looked over her shoulder at him. “Is that all?”
“Isn’t it enough? You asked him questions about the case. That is my job, not yours. You work in a morgue. You type reports. You do not question suspects in a murder investigation.”
Now,thatsounded more like his usual exasperation. She returned to scooping tight, folded leaves into the teapot and poured in hot water to steep.
“Yes, well, I’m not certain how much longer Claude and I will be at the morgue,” she said as she pulled out a chair adjacent to his. She folded her arms on the table. “I believe Mr. Pritchard has placed this apprentice under my uncle’s training for a reason: to replace him.”
And once Claude was ejected from the morgue, Leo would no longer be welcome there either.
“Have you interacted much with him? Higgins, I mean,” Jasper asked.
“Why do you ask that?”
He shook his head. “Just curious. When I saw him, he seemed uninterested in working at a morgue.”
She watched him for a moment, skeptical. Jasper wasn’t everjustcurious. There was always some larger purpose for any inquiry he made. “I think Mr. Higgins is uninterested in working anywhere. Not that the chief coroner will care. The man is young and a family friend.”
Mr. Pritchard, who oversaw several of the city’s mortuaries, would support Chief Coroner Giles’s appointment of Higgins in a heartbeat.
“What will you do if he takes over?” Jasper asked. She appreciated that he didn’t try to tell her all would be well or that she was worrying for no reason.
“I’m not sure. I suppose I could apply to a funeral service like Hogarth and Tipson.” Not being squeamish with the dead was a prerequisite she could meet, though she worried she might lack the necessary compassion and care for family members of the newly deceased. And then there would be the scent of white lilies to contend with. Funeral services were often overrun with them, and their sickly-sweet fragrance never failed to bring her back to the day her family had been interred at All Saints.
Jasper leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. “You could be a matron at the Yard like Miss Brooks—ifyou could keep your nose out of the detective department.”
She sent him a withering look. Becoming a matron was something she’d considered before, but it wouldn’t work. “I’ve no interest in guarding women. And I’ve no ability with children. Dita tells me about her days, and I can’t blame her for looking forward to giving up her post.”
Jasper spun the empty teacup on its saucer before him. “She is leaving?”
“Not right away. But soon. She wants to marry and start a family.”
Leo kept her lips sealed that Dita’s prospective husband was PC Lloyd. Jasper wouldn’t intend to say anything, but one slip, and Dita would be mortified.
Jasper kept spinning his teacup absentmindedly. Leo picked up the teapot; the leaves had brewed long enough, and besides, he was driving her mad with his fiddling.
“You could do that too,” he said.
Leo placed a mesh strainer over his cup and poured. “Do what?”
“Marry.”
Her wrist jerked involuntarily, and she nearly spilled the tea. She pulled the teapot back and stared at him. “I told you not to tease me.”
“I’m not teasing.”
She sighed and poured her cup next. “It’s not in the cards for me.”
